Physiological function as regulation of large transcriptional programs: the cellular response to genotoxic stress

The responses to ionizing radiation and other genotoxic environmental stresses are complex and are regulated by a number of overlapping molecular pathways. One such stress signaling pathway involves p53, which regulates the expression of over 100 genes already identified. It is also becoming increasingly apparent that the pattern of stress gene expression has some cell type specificity. It may be possible to exploit these differences in stress gene responsiveness as molecular markers through the use of a combined informatics and functional genomics approach. The techniques of microarray analysis potentially offer the opportunity to monitor changes in gene expression across the entire set of expressed genes in a cell or organism. As an initial step in the development of a functional genomics approach to stress gene analysis, we have recently demonstrated the utility of cDNA microarray hybridization to measure radiation-stress gene responses and identified a number of previously unknown radiation-regulated genes. The responses of some of these genes to DNA-damaging agents vary widely in cell lines from different tissues of origin and different genetic backgrounds. While this again highlights the importance of a cellular context to genotoxic stress responses, it also raises the prospect of expression-profiling of cell lines, tissues, and tumors. Such profiles may have a predictive value if they can define regions of ‘expression space’ that correlate with important endpoints, such as response to cancer therapy regimens, or identification of exposures to environmental toxins.     

Promise and progress in environmental genomics: a status report on the applications of gene expression-based microarray studies in ecologically relevant fish species

The advent of any new technology is typically met with great excitement. So it was a few years ago, when the combination of advances in sequencing technology and the development of microarray technology made measurements of global gene expression in ecologically relevant species possible. Many of the review papers published around that time promised that these new technologies would revolutionize environmental biology as they had revolutionized medicine and related fields. A few years have passed since these technological advancements have been made, and the use of microarray studies in non‐model fish species has been adopted in many laboratories internationally. Has the relatively widespread adoption of this technology really revolutionized the fields of environmental biology, including ecotoxicology, aquaculture and ecology, as promised? Or have these studies merely become a novelty and a potential distraction for scientists addressing environmentally relevant questions? In this review, the promises made in early review papers, in particular about the advances that the use of microarrays would enable, are summarized; these claims are compared to the results of recent studies to determine whether the forecasted changes have materialized. Some applications, as discussed in the paper, have been realized and have led to advances in their field, others are still under development.     

Linking the genes: inferring quantitative gene networks from microarray data

Modern microarray technology is capable of providing data about the expression of thousands of genes, and even of whole genomes. An important question is how this technology can be used most effectively to unravel the workings of cellular machinery. Here, we propose a method to infer genetic networks on the basis of data from appropriately designed microarray experiments. In addition to identifying the genes that affect a specific other gene directly, this method also estimates the strength of such effects. We will discuss both the experimental setup and the theoretical background.     

DNA microarray technology in toxicogenomics of aquatic models: methods and applications

Toxicogenomics represents the merging of toxicology with genomics and bioinformatics to investigate biological functions of genome in response to environmental contaminants. Aquatic species have traditionally been used as models in toxicology to characterize the actions of environmental stresses. Recent completion of the DNA sequencing for several fish species has spurred the development of DNA microarrays allowing investigators access to toxicogenomic approaches. However, since microarray technology is thus far limited to only a few aquatic species and derivation of biological meaning from microarray data is highly dependent on statistical arguments, the full potential of microarray in aquatic species research has yet to be realized. Herein we review some of the issues related to construction, probe design, statistical and bioinformatical data analyses, and current applications of DNA microarrays. As a model a recently developed medaka (Oryzias latipes) oligonucleotide microarray was described to highlight some of the issues related to array technology and its application in aquatic species exposed to hypoxia. Although there are known non-biological variations present in microarray data, it remains unquestionable that array technology will have a great impact on aquatic toxicology. Microarray applications in aquatic toxicogenomics will range from the discovery of diagnostic biomarkers, to establishment of stress-specific signatures and molecular pathways hallmarking the adaptation to new environmental conditions.     

基因芯片及其在环境微生物研究中的应用

基因芯片因其具有高密度、高灵敏度、快速 (实时 )检测、经济、自动化和低背景水平等特点 ,而广泛应用于不同的研究领域。目前 ,应用于环境微生物研究的基因芯片主要有功能基因芯片 (FGAs)、系统发育的寡核苷酸芯片 (POAs)和群落基因组芯片 (CGAs)。综述了基因芯片在环境微生物研究中的应用 ,包括自然环境中微生物的基因表达分析、比较基因组分析和混合微生物群落的分析等。讨论了基因芯片面临的挑战和前景展望     

From functional genomics to functional immunomics: new challenges, old problems, big rewards

The development of DNA microarray technology a decade ago led to the establishment of functional genomics as one of the most active and successful scientific disciplines today. With the ongoing development of immunomic microarray technology—a spatially addressable, large-scale technology for measurement of specific immunological response—the new challenge of functional immunomics is emerging, which bears similarities to but is also significantly different from functional genomics. Immunonic data has been successfully used to identify biological markers involved in autoimmune diseases, allergies, viral infections such as human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), influenza, diabetes, and responses to cancer vaccines. This review intends to provide a coherent vision of this nascent scientific field, and speculate on future research directions. We discuss at some length issues such as epitope prediction, immunomic microarray technology and its applications, and computation and statistical challenges related to functional immunomics. Based on the recent discovery of regulation mechanisms in T cell responses, we envision the use of immunomic microarrays as a tool for advances in systems biology of cellular immune responses, by means of immunomic regulatory network models.     

Challenges in applying microarrays to environmental studies

Although DNA microarray technology has been used successfully to analyze global gene expression in pure cultures, it has not been rigorously tested and evaluated within the context of complex environmental samples. Adapting microarray hybridization for use in environmental studies faces several challenges associated with specificity, sensitivity and quantitation.     

From microarrays to mechanisms of brain development and function

Microarray technology provides a powerful approach to understand complex biological systems. The most common application of microarray technology is to document gene expression profiles of all genes within a genome in response to specific conditions such as disease, drug application, or genotype. One result of this technology is the ability to ascribe activities to genes with unknown functions - such rationale is the basis behind ‘functional genomics’. This approach is particularly well-suited to studies of the brain because roughly one third to one half of all genes in vertebrate genomes are expressed in the brain. However, less than half of such genes have any defined function. While a large number of studies have applied microarray technology to the brain, few studies have followed up the expression profiling approach with functional characterization of the genes identified. In this review, I highlight recent research that reflects the initial promise of functional genomics in the brain. I focus on neural differentiation with particular emphasis on synapse development.     

Stem Cells and Stem Cell-derived Tissues and Their Use in Safety Assessment

Toxicology has long relied on animal models in a tedious approach to understanding risk of exposure to an uncharacterized molecule. Stem cell-derived tissues can be made in high purity, quality, and quantity to enable a new approach to this problem. Currently, stem cell-derived tissues are primarily “generic” genetic backgrounds; the future will see the integration of various genetic backgrounds and complex three-dimensional models to create truly unique in vitro organoids. This minireview focuses on the state of the art of a number of stem cell-derived tissues and details their application in toxicology.     

Do DNA microarrays have their future behind them?

The first report on DNA microarray technology appeared in Science in 1995. Starting from gene expression profiling, its application fields have considerably evolved and extend from microbiology to cancer study. DNA microarrays are now routinely used for the detection of single nucleotide polymorphisms, microRNAs analysis, study of copy number variation, CpG methylations detection.... Furthermore, the approval of DNA microarray technology by US Food and Drug Administration has opened the door to new applications in clinical diagnostics. At the same time, DNA arrays have to face the concurrence of the latest generation of very high throughput sequencing devices which are predicted to make the microarray technology obsolete. This review will discuss on this paradoxical situation.     

Spot Detection and Image Segmentation in DNA Microarray Data

Following the invention of microarrays in 1994, the development and applications of this technology have grown exponentially. The numerous applications of microarray technology include clinical diagnosis and treatment, drug design and discovery, tumour detection, and environmental health research. One of the key issues in the experimental approaches utilising microarrays is to extract quantitative information from the spots, which represent genes in a given experiment. For this process, the initial stages are important and they influence future steps in the analysis. Identifying the spots and separating the background from the foreground is a fundamental problem in DNA microarray data analysis. In this review, we present an overview of state-of-the-art methods for microarray image segmentation. We discuss the foundations of the circle-shaped approach, adaptive shape segmentation, histogram-based methods and the recently introduced clustering-based techniques. We analytically show that clustering-based techniques are equivalent to the one-dimensional, standard k-means clustering algorithm that utilises the Euclidean distance.     

元基因组文库分析技术研究进展

随着新的分析技术的不断出现和成熟,促进了微生物分子生态学及相关学科的诞生和迅速发展。其中,元基因组文库分析技术即是近年来微生物分子生态学研究领域兴起的一种新的分析技术。就元基因组分析技术诞生的背景及该技术的原理进行了讨论,着重阐述了元基因组文库分析技术在寻找新基因、开发新的生物活性物质、研究群落中微生物多样性、人类元基因组测序等方面的应用。另外,归纳总结了目前国际上常用的诸如PCR为基础的筛选、荧光原位杂交（fluorescent in situ hybridization,FISH）、底物诱导的基因表达筛选（substrate induced gene expression screening,SIGEX）、基因芯片等元基因组文库筛选方法,并就不同方法的优缺点进行了分析和讨论,指出了目前元基因组文库分析技术存在的主要问题并对今后该技术的发展进行了展望。     

A perspective on microarrays: current applications,pitfalls, and potential uses

With advances in robotics, computational capabilities, and the fabrication of high quality glass slides coinciding with increased genomic information being available on public databases, microarray technology is increasingly being used in laboratories around the world. In fact, fields as varied as: toxicology, evolutionary biology, drug development and production, disease characterization, diagnostics development, cellular physiology and stress responses, and forensics have benefiting from its use. However, for many researchers not familiar with microarrays, current articles and reviews often address neither the fundamental principles behind the technology nor the proper designing of experiments. Although, microarray technology is relatively simple, conceptually, its practice does require careful planning and detailed understanding of the limitations inherently present. Without these considerations, it can be exceedingly difficult to ascertain valuable information from microarray data. Therefore, this text aims to outline key features in microarray technology, paying particular attention to current applications as outlined in recent publications, experimental design, statistical methods, and potential uses. Furthermore, this review is not meant to be comprehensive, but rather substantive; highlighting important concepts and detailing steps necessary to conduct and interpret microarray experiments. Collectively, the information included in this text will highlight the versatility of microarray technology and provide a glimpse of what the future may hold.